[Andyman_1970]

Has anyone used any transcription software? I'm looking to transcribe some lectures I have on MP3 and am wonder the best way to go about it. I thought about getting that voice recognition software (Dragon Speak) and playing the audio file and letting the software transcribe the lecture...........

Any other ideas or better ways of doing this would be greatly appreciated...........

Thanks.

 

[binary visions]

I've used Dragon Naturally Speaking before, my boss uses it now to transcribe court notes. It works pretty well if you're very thorough with the "training" portion of it.

You still need to go through and correct things but it's certainly easier to proofread 10 pages of notes than it is to type them.

Make sure your audio files are of high quality though. Crappy compressed files yield interesting results sometimes.

 

[Andyman_1970]

What does the training portion consist of?

 

[binary visions]

What does the training portion consist of?

You basically spend a lot of time reading words off the screen, so that the software can get used to your voice (the system gives you a word, asks you to say it, then asks you to repeat it, the moves to the next word). The old version of the software I used had an extremely comprehensive training portion that I spent several days working on (just for short periods each day, probably could have knocked the whole thing off in an hour or two).

I don't know if the new software is more sophisticated in that respect but if you're going to be doing unattended transcription, I'd suggest you go through whatever long training comes with the software now. The old software had an option to do short training but it caused many more errors during voice recognition.

 

[Andyman_1970]

My concern with that is that the software would be transcribing someone else speaking not me, would that have an adverse affect??

 

[binary visions]

My concern with that is that the software would be transcribing someone else speaking not me, would that have an adverse affect??

Yep, good luck with that. Unless you can get the person to do the training, or the other person has an extremely similar speaking voice to you (specifically, accent and pronounciation), you're likely going to get a lot of errors.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a shot, of course. Voice recognition has come a long ways and you'll probably get the meat of the text. Also, if the speaker has a clear and concise voice, it might go very well.

Is there a free trial you can download and give it a shot before you buy it? I might be able to obtain a, ahem, "free trial" version for you if not and you want to give it a shot.